Church Volunteer Killed

Community Will Miss Her

KING AND QUEEN — Jean L. Gwathmey, 74, a retired public school teacher who devoted much of her life to community service, was killed Saturday when high winds toppled a dead tree onto her pickup truck.

"If anybody was ready to go on a minute's notice, she was the one, because she led such a good life," said Caroline G. Jones, Mrs. Gwathmey's sister-in-law.

Mrs. Gwathmey was returning home on Route 636 from working at the Clothes Closet at Bruington Baptist Church, which collects donated apparel for needy people, when the accident occurred.

"She'd held about every position in our church except pastor," Jones said.

Mrs. Gwathmey was a Bible teacher and leader of a girls' mission group. She and her husband, William B. Gwathmey, within the past dozen years had served as missionaries in Tanzania, Hungary and Central America. They lived on the family farm, Rosemount, in Walkerton.

"A lady of 74 - you would never know it. She was full-out," Robert L. Fraser, chairman of the King and Queen County Social Services Board, said Monday about Mrs. Gwathmey's numerous activities, which included service on the board. "She will truly be missed," he said.

Besides her board position the past four years, Fraser also knew Mrs. Gwathmey as a teacher at West Point High School, where he, too, was a teacher and then principal.

"She was a good Christian lady and she lived that," he said. She was concerned about her students, not about work day distractions. "Jean was always the last person to hear gossip, because that was not her way," said Fraser, who now is assistant principal at Mathews High School.

Mrs. Gwathmey held a master's of education degree from Virginia Commonwealth University. She taught home economics at West Point, but Fraser said she didn't just teach the mechanics of sewing and cooking. "She taught the finer things that we sometimes miss today," such as manners.

She was active in the Woman's Club of King and Queen County; the American Cancer Society; King and Queen Community Ministries , which helps poor people obtain food, heating fuel and medicines; the Farm Women's Committee of the King and Queen County Farm Bureau; and other local and regional organizations, as well as being closely involved with her family of four children and nine grandchildren.

Jones described her as outgoing, capable and kind. "Many people since this has happened have said, 'Oh, she was always smiling.'"

The funeral will be at 2 p.m. today in Bruington Baptist Church.

"It's a big loss not only to this family, but to the whole community," Jones said.

Judith Haynes can be reached at 804-642-1734 or by e-mail at jhaynes@dailypress.com